Patent Document 1 discloses a clip and a pillar garnish fixing structure using the clip. The conventional clip fixes a pillar garnish housing a curtain airbag, to a pillar and prevents the pillar garnish from being freely moved into a passenger compartment when the curtain airbag is deployed. “Curtain Airbag” may be called as “CSA”, which means “Curtain Shield Airbag”.
In FIGS. 16-17, (b) of FIG. 13, (d), (e) and (f) of FIG. 19 and (b) of FIG. 20, broken lines show a comparison clip 111. The comparison clip 111 is a reference clip for comparison with a clip of the present application and is not a known conventional clip. Portions of the comparison clip corresponding to portions of the present application clip are denoted with reference numerals added with “1” at tops (left sides) of the reference numerals of the portions of the present application clip. For example, reference numeral “131” in the comparison corresponds to reference numeral “31” in the present application.
The comparison clip 111 includes a seat 125, a shaft 121 extending in a direction away from the seat 125 and a pair of engagement hooks 131 opposing each other. Each of the pair of engagement hooks 131 is connected to the shaft 121 at a hook connecting portion 141 located at an opposite seat-side end of the engagement hook 131 and is separated from the shaft 121 by a slit except the hook connecting portion 141. The engagement hook 131 extends from the hook connecting portion 141 toward the seat 125 and ends in the form of a free end. In the comparison clip 111, the shaft 121 is circumferentially continuous at the same axial position as the hook connecting portion 141. A deformation promoting portion 53 of the present application later described, for promoting deformation of the hook connecting portion 141 toward a center axis line of the clip such as an elongated aperture is not provided at a pair of shaft wall portions opposing each other in a diametrical direction perpendicular to a direction in which the pair of engagement hooks 131 are opposed. The hook connecting portion 141, which is located at the same axial position as an end of the slit, is located at a position equal to a rotational deformation center Rc′ of the engagement hook 131 or further from the seat 125 than the rotational deformation center Rc′.